marriage and xmas and stuff

It's been so cold here lately, I've been finding myself just *tired* and worn out from it. Craving somewhere warm. I want sunshine that toasts and bakes and gets down to my boooonnees. Our bathroom door doesn't close all the way, so showers are chilly. the next free day Adam and I both have I need to remember to get him to help me fix it.

My ring is still sparkly, and I want to get back into the wedding-planning rush, but everyone is consumed with finals and Christmas. I supppppose I can wait until after xmas, when I will go buy tons of twinkle lights and gold ribbon, and start collecting. I will feel calmer when we have a date set.

I have been exercising a lot this week - feels good. Yesterday was the 4th day in a row. I went online and found a Sprint Triathlon training schedule, and am following that. So every day I do a minimum of 20 minutes of varying amounts of swimming, running, and biking. To meet my goal of 600 fitness minutes this month, I am also adding in random 10 minutes on the elliptical here and there. Today I am going to do 16 minutes of running, 11 minutes of elliptical, and then my interval-walking, which will equal about 16 minutes also. This bumps me up to 45 minutes which gets me 2 activity points for weight watchers instead of just 1 if I left it at 44. ;o)

Defrosting ground beef, tonight I'll make taco salad. Made enchiladas two ways this week. Trying to get better at normal-everyday cooking, rather than huge-production meals like I usually do. Also trying to make a whole week's worth of meals using the same flavor-profile so I can use the same ingredients.... so I don't buy a bunch of cilantro, use it once, and waste it, for example.

Juno is my favorite thing on this planet right now. She is so freaking beautiful that I can just stare at her for hours. I gave her a very thorough bath last week and now she is all clean and fluffy and soft and fantastic. Adam's been working super late this week, and falls asleep on the couch so he doesn't wake me up, and so Juno's been jumping up into bed with me. She's been so good - hasn't destroyed anything for weeks! She sure seems like she's growing up all of a sudden. Man I love that dog.

Adam's job is going really well, though it feels like I haven't seen him in weeks. He's right at the point where he is both getting off probation and getting qualified to be on his own at the park. It's an exciting week for him.

I bought all of my Christmas presents online this year - SUCH a good idea. I love not having to go shopping. I'm excited about them too, and I'm just waiting for this to start arriving so I can start the wrapping! Adam has to work this Christmas, so we are doing our thing Christmas Eve, and will see if his aunt is available for breakfast that morning. I'm going to at least stop by his aunt's house on Christmas, because we didn't go to Thanksgiving since he had to work, and now that we're engaged, I feel different now...I can go to his family's celebration in my own right, not just attached to him. I am really enjoying these subtle little changes in my role as we plan on getting married.

re-emerging after the holidays

I didn't mean to take such a long break from the computer, even though it was Christmas, but yesterday my internet was down and I had no idea why. Today it's all better though, so....mystery stays unsolved.

In any case, christmas was exactly what I thought it would be - fun, tiring, and good. My boyfriend actually went onto my etsy account, found my list of favorite items, and ordered the most beautiful blue and silver necklace for me from afinishingtouch.etsy.com. How thoughtful is that?

He also got me a fish tank! We went yesterday and bought rocks and plants and fish, and now our house feels even more like a home. I'll post pictures eventually.

When I got online today I had two nice etsy surprises - first, I made another sale. I sold my salt air and sea form crocheted purse - and how silly is it that I am a little sad to see it go? That was definitely one of my favorite bags that I have made - and the photographs of that bag represent a breakthrough for me in taking pictures. In any case, it is also nice to know that someone else appreciated it too!

The other nice surprise was that my shino cup with the curled handle got into ANOTHER treasury!!! This one was curated by desertsoapstone and it's a beautiful, beautiful treasury, so go check it out.

That's all for me for right now. I'll be back here later, I'm sure!

christmas eve!

Today is shaping up to be a good christmas eve. Adam left this morning to go snowboarding, which is his favorite thing in the world to do, so I am glad he gets to today. I am at work until 2:30, then I am going home to CLEAN like crazy - which makes me doubly glad Adam is snowboarding, cuz it'll keep him out of my hair so I can actually do things. :) I need to finish wrapping the last presents, and make dinner, and then Adam and I are going to watch Love Actually and open presents.

Puppy fever is still going strong, but it's starting to be tempered with realism. I can't afford a puppy on my own right now - minimum is 500 just for the puppy, not for food or shots or toys or anything. I will have to wait at least til Jan 7th before I could afford it on my own. Adam says he will come up with money if his dad comes up with a good litter. We had the chance to have a bitch to breed with Rommel - Adam debated it all day yesterday but he was crazy to even consider it that much! What would I do with 8 german shepherd puppies? That'd be my full time job. Yeesh. But it's good to know his dad is looking out for us.

In other news, I've been having some crazy heart palpitations for the last two weeks or so. If they continue past the new year, I should go to the doctor. I've had ekg's, heart monitors, even an ultrasound of my heart, and my heart is structurally healthy, so all they've been able to tell me is don't drink caffeine, don't get stressed, and when I need to use an inhaler, use it two fingerspaces away. So I don't know if there's anything they can do for me, but it's uncomfortable. Occasionally painful, but usually it's just like living in a constant state of anxiety. It's so weird - my brain is not anxious about anything, but my physical reactions to things feel so nervous. My heart keeps jumping like it does when I get startled or scared, but for no good reason. Ahhhhhhggggg. I have to keep telling myself that I am calm and everything is fine. So very strange.

Anyhoo, hurrah for Christmas Eve. Hope everyone has a wonderful holiday!

xmas, puppies, and...biopsies?

I always wonder just how personal to make this blog..and I go back and forth about which details to write and which not to write. But ya know, I've never been one to hold back, and honestly - you all saw me dressed up in 80's style hair/makeup, so I think we have no secrets anymore. I went to the doctor again today for a recurring issue that's caused a lot of pain for me for about a year. I've been so frustrated - I've seen I can't even tell you how many doctors how many times. I switched again, so today was the first day with this new specialist, and it was a little disconcerting because she shares an office with the last person I saw. She was younger, and had a lot of confidence. I really liked her - she seems like she is really taking control of my situation, rather than everyone else who all had a "wait and see..." attitude..for the last YEAR. So that's the good news. The bad news (well, sort of good news too I guess) is that I am having a biopsy in a couple of weeks. It's good because some sort of progress is being made, but it's bad because the idea of a biopsy is kind of freaking me out. So... I don't know. I think I am deciding to just be glad that she is doing something about it.

Tomorrow is Christmas Eve! I seem to be more enmeshed in Christmas than I ever have been in the past. Part of it is working in an office for the first time - so the amount of cards and candies and cookies is kind of staggering. Part of it is running an etsy site, I WANT people to be christmas-present-ing, and part of it is living with Adam and having a tree and putting up lights and getting presents for each other's families and everything. I believe that wonderful man o mine is going snowboarding during the day, but then we have a Christmas Eve date to watch Love Actually and open our presents. Christmas day is going to be a very very long family day, so I'm going to take a minute now and zen out so I remember that I love being with family, Adam gets overwhelmed sometimes by mine, and we won't all hang out again til Easter so I should soak it up now.

Oooooh the other big news, which deserves it's own post really, is that we are looking into getting a PUPPY!!! So exciting! We are going to get (ideally) a female german shepherd puppy, which I will be initially and primarily responsible for, since Adam already has Rommel and Adam will be starting Police Academy soon. I have puppy fever like crazy. I want want want want want and it's sort of driving me bonkers not being able to rush out and go GET one. We're waiting to hear from his dad, though, because as captain-something-or-other of the la-county-animal-something-or-other he has some ins and favors he could potentially call in to get us a catch on a new dog. SO EXCITED. WANT A PUPPY NOW.

I am so excited in fact, that I think this post deserves some puppy love in the form of photos of german shepherd puppies. Who doesn't love that??

AHHHhhhhh I die, I die, I die... must-have-puppy-NOW!

it's beginning to look a lot like christmas?

Apparently christmastime is upon us. I think I mentioned that last week Adam and I went and picked up a christmas tree and put up lights! Here's the photographic evidence.

So my big plan this year was to make my own christmas cards - I have never sent christmas cards out before, because I never celebrated christmas so attentively. However, last year was Adam and my first christmas living together, and apparently he was sad that we didn't have cards to send. So this year I started way back in June or July making Christmas Cards so that I would have time to handmake them. See, I think getting packaged-from-the-store cards are sort of a ridiculous waste of paper just so someone gets something with your name written on it. But handmade cards! That's a totally different thing!

Except now it's December 9th and I have all of 6 or 7 cards actually done. I need a plan B. I think what I will do is instead of making them as intensely as I was, with full on scrapbooking supplies, I might make them on publisher and just print them myself. That counts, right?

december blog carnival

Since I am updating...

I missed the first blog carnival for december, so I'm going to get a head start for the second one. The blog topic is:
1. Christmas traditions & recipes- Share Christmas traditions or your favorite holiday recipe.


Now - I love Christmas time. I really do. Last night Adam and I went out and picked up a christmas tree, and hung lights on the front of the house. I'm thrilled with it. Picking out a christmas tree was one of the best family traditions that we did with my Grandma. We'd get all dressed up in those cheap drugstore gloves and wear scarves the one time a year we ever wore them (we live in Southern California), and run around a christmas tree lot pretending to be Laura Ingall's and drinking hot cider.

The reason it was so exciting was that we didn't have a christmas tree at my house. My parents are Baha'i' - so we didn't celebrate christmas with our immediate family. We did christmas at my grandma's with the extended family, and all my life I have loved having the best of both worlds.

My family did celebrate a winter holiday though - called Shabiyalda. This is celebrated on the longest night of the year, and is so full of winter traditions I don't even know where to start. We start the evening off by covering up the tv with some sort of cloth, so that we aren't even tempted to turn it on. My dad puts on Iranian music on the cd player (there is one song with my name in it, so I am always begging for that) and my mom puts all of the little snack foods in her pink glass bowls. We eat so much that night - I guess that's a tradition for most holidays. The big ticket item is roasting potatoes in the fireplace. Yum yum yum. Those always take so long that they're kind of our midnight snack. Oh - that was the other neat thing about Shabiyalda, at least when we were younger - the idea was to stay up as late as you possibly could. We'd drag all of the blankets and pillows to the living room and fall asleep one at a time while my dad read Persian folk tales. The older I get, the earlier I fall asleep.

It's one of my favorite nights of the year. It's one of those traditions that can be celebrated with no religion involved - just for the wonderment of being warm, inside with family, on a long winter night.